 | It was the year 2003, when I opened up Middle Earth, It was a hybrid store that had comics, manga, computer games (LAN center), X-boxes, card and board games, basically a geeks paradise. In many ways we were cutting edge, with a 10 MEG fiber pipe when the average LAN center only had a single T1 (keep in mind this was 2003, when AOL was still popular). We had a one mile WiFi access point that we used to resell internet access like a private ISP. We performed computer repair, and had hosted Counter Strike servers (killerzoo.com and killcrew.com) before valve/steam even existed. We held Lock-in where 20+ people stayed awake all night playing video games.
We sold Magic The Gathering and held tournaments on Friday nights, and even had our own MTG League.
I wasn’t a huge MTG fan, as I felt it was more a game of luck that anything else so I was pretty excited when I heard about a new card game called Ophidian 2350, that was more dependent on strategy. The game came out to rave reviews, and I was one of the first stores to showcase the game, and really push it over MTG.
The game did really well in our store, but died when the folks that published it (Fleer Entertainment) went bankrupt three months after the first print run. (This had nothing to do with the game, but rather the tanking of the baseball card market which was Fleer’s primary money maker.) The game disappeared off shelves, and no one was able to order any more of it.
Fast forward to 2013. By this time I had moved on to other things. Middle Earth changed into Quantum-Net (with a more technology focus), and was eventually sold to a third party who ran it into the ground. I moved on to other projects, but maintained a close relationship with many of the customers who had now become close personal friends. I always keep my hobbies, and still play computer games, board and card games to this day.
I’m a geek and proud of it!
Then one night I was bored and started surfing eBay for collectibles and saw someone selling large quantities of the game. This perplexed me, so I contacted the seller to get more details and found out he had over 10 pallets of the game. A light bulb went off. If the creators of this game wouldn’t or couldn’t bring it back, then I would. I contacted the creators of Ophidian 2350 and after a long back and forth with lawyers I was eventually able to procure a five year license to bring the game back to market. My intention is to bring back the game and use crowd funding to generate the second and third expansions which were never printed by Fleer.
I joined forces with one of my former employees, and best friend Chris Milling to form Hack and Slash Game Company. we later added one of the original Ophidian 2350 game designers, Jason Robinette, and an Ophidian Super fan Hugo Ferreira.
You can find out more about our games and team here:
https://www.hackandslashgames.com
https://www.facebook.com/hackandslashgames |
